Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice created the 20th century's first (and last) great rock opera with flashes of Prokofiev and Stravinsky amid its hosannas – even Shostakovich was a fan, writes Michael Coveney

After all the hype, just how good is the Lion King which finally opened last night at the Lyceum Theatre in London? Impressive certainly. But its diverse visual brilliance is often betrayed by its Disneyfied verbal banality. To suggest, as one commentator recently did, that it is on a creative par with Hamlet is to show an insane lack of proportion.